The present disclosure relates to a driving assistance apparatus for a vehicle employing a motor as a driving source.
Conventionally, hybrid vehicles employing an engine and a motor in combination as the driving sources, electric vehicles employing solely a motor as the driving source, and the like are known. With such vehicles, by causing the motor to perform regenerative braking in deceleration or the like, a part of kinetic energy of the vehicle can be recovered as electric energy.
Further, in recent years, aiming to increase the amount of regenerated electricity recovered as electric energy, a driving assistance technique for assisting the driver in driving has also been proposed (e.g., see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-114791).
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-114791 discloses, as one example of information displaying function of assisting the driver in driving a hybrid vehicle, calculating a predicted regeneration power value based on a vehicle speed and a brake operation amount of the driver. With the hybrid vehicle, when the predicted regeneration power value is greater than a regeneration acceptable power value of a battery, it is predicted that a mechanical brake instead of regenerative braking by the motor will be actuated, and a mechanical brake actuation lamp is turned on. In operating the brake, the driver can learn from the turned-on mechanical brake actuation lamp that the mechanical brake will be possibly actuated.
The above-described information displaying function can inform the driver about information on regenerative braking based on the current brake operation. However, it has not been considered to inform the driver about an energy-efficient deceleration operation before the vehicle is decelerated. Accordingly, the information displaying function intended to increase the regeneration amount is still susceptible to improvement.